In my previous post, I talked about Lotus Notes Client’s extensibility and provided a way for an add-in to contribute a menu option in Notes so a user can quickly add “Indian Rupee” symbol into any Notes document. I am sure as you start to use the new Rupee Symbol, you will want to also add it when you are chatting with your colleague using the Lotus Sametime client. Beauty is that the Lotus Sametime Client is also a client which can be customized, by adding what we call “Plugins”.

Thanks to Bidisha Ghosh, who was able to create a plugin for the Sametime Client. Once you have installed this plugin, you will see a button in the ST Chat, like below:

This does require you to have Sametime Client 8.0 or later, or am embedded sametime client within your Notes Client (Standard Client). Here are the instructions on how you can download this plugin and install it in your sametime environment.

First download this file, and unzip it on your hard-disk. (let’s assume you unzipped it at c:\rupee)

If you are using Standalone Sametime Client Version 8.0 or higher)

Select “Tools->Plugins-> Install Plugins” menu option

select “Search for new features to install”

Select “Add Folder location” and provide the folder where you unzipped the above file (e.g c:\rupee)

click on “Finish”

In the next dialog, select the “checkbox” and again go through the dialogs, selecting “I agree” to complete the installation.

Restart the Sametime Client to get this Rupee Symbol.

Similar steps need to be done if you are using integrated Sametime Client in the Standard Version of the Notes Client. First you need to enable the Installation Option to install the plugin. Do the following:

1) Browse to <note_install_directory>/framework/rcp/plugin_customization.ini
2) In the plugin_customization.ini file add the following line and save.
com.ibm.notes.branding/enable.update.ui=true
3) Start up your Notes client.
4) Select the File -> Application -> Install menu option to install the plugin (Follow the same steps as above)

Notes, as we know it, is a platform rather than a specific application. That, in itself, adds to the complexity to the Notes Client. When I ask people what Notes Client is, they say it’s Mail, Calendar, and bunch of other Databases. But really if you combine it all, it’s a platform, on which applications like Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Discussion Database are built. I will try to elaborate more in my blog in the coming Months. And show the power of this which can be exploited by everyone. I would like to start off my blog showing a simple and very useful add-on to the Notes Client.

Every Indian is excited and proud to have a symbol for the Indian Currency, which is “Rupee”. Until now, there was no symbol, and most people used to write “Rs” before the amount. Well, thanks to the government and IIT professor, we now have a new symbol which people can use when referring to Rupees. This is

Now, until we have a FONT which includes this character and the keystrokes assigned to it, and then getting those fonts downloaded on each windows machine, we are stuck with trying to find ways on how we can add this to our documents. Given Notes’s programming model and ease of adding a new extension, I just created a simple “add-in:, which once installed into your Notes Client, will allow you to add the Rupee Symbol within any Document. Here are the steps to do this:

Copy the ZIP file from here -> Add Rupee Notes Add-in , and UNZIP the contents into your Notes Install Directory (if you don’t know what this is, right-click on your Notes Client launch icon on your desktop, and select “Properties” which will tell you where the program is coming from. )

Edit your “notes.ini” file (this is also typically in your Notes Install Directory). You can use “Notepad” to edit it.

Search for “addinmenus” in this file.

If the line exists, add “,addrupee.dll” to the end of this line

If the line does NOT exist, add “addinmenus=addrupee.dll” line at the end of “notes.ini” file and hit ENTER

That’s it. Once this is done, exit out of Notes and re-enter. Now in any document in a rich-text field (like the Body of your memo you are creating), click on “Action” menu and you will have a new menu option called “Add Rupee Symbol”.